Odd Fires: Prestolite v. Delco - The JeepsterMan

Odd Fires: Prestolite v. Delco

 

Hi. You're probably used to seeing my son from the JeepsterMan, John. But today you've got Mark! And the reason why is, because I'm old. And so are some of the parts that you deal with on your Jeepster Commando, and, of course, the Willys vehicles...They're old! So today we are going to talk about distributors. And specifically in the 225 V6 odd fire found on the '67-'73 Commando and some other CJ models in that era as well. So, first of all, we have the very old school prestolite distributor, and sorry this one's a little rickety and missing a few parts. But what's interesting about a prestolite is that it's going to have a cap, and this cap it goes on only one way, and this cap does not have a little window that you can adjust the points. So these points have to be adjusted first using a feeler gauge. Then you put this on and you can obviously check it with a dwell meter but youre going to have to use a feeler gauge to adjust it- which is different than the Delco which ill get to in a minute. Also the prestolite, if you look at it, it has a tag on it. Many times customers call us, they don't know what their distributor is, what they have. This tag and this tag number will always identify it. Another thing about the prestolite- it is old school and yes that means that you cannot upgrade it. You cannot upgrade this to a solid state. You can, which leads me to our next distributor which is called the Delco style. Now Delco style it has points, it's got a rotor, just like what you're gonna find in your prestolite. The added bonus of having a cap, and this cap has a little access window. You can open it up, you can put a nice little allen key in there. And you can actually adjust your points while the vehicle is running and you can have a dwell meter on it and set it at about 30 which is perfect. Uh the thing with the Delco also is that it has some drawbacks in identifying it because this is for an odd fire. Notice that the odd fire has a notch right here. And that notch is very close to your vacuum advance. On the 225 or 231 even fire, that notch will be back here toward the back. It's the wrong cap, it won't work...You can make it work! but it won't run right. So you wanna look for the corresponding cap that has a notch up close to this window and that fits up close to this vacuum advance. And this is about the position that this distributor will sit in in the engine which we will talk about later as well. The good thing about the Delco, it's a little bit more modern, well i should say quite a bit more modern than the prestolite in that being you can put a solid state ignition in it. It's not quite as good as an HEI. Doesn't have quite the spark of the HEI but its a fantastic upgrade and its not- its a lot more cost effective. So if you do have a Delco, uh you can upgrade this to a solid state and do away with the points and give yourself a better spark as well. The Delco is a hard distributor to find for the 225 V6 um as well as the prestolite. There's probably a few more prestolites around, used ones anyway. But they're not as good of a distributor. So if you get your choice, or if you already have Delco, you've got those capabilities, you've got the best distributor you can get in there unless you go to an HEI, and you can always upgrade this to a solid state. Thanks!

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